


And the Stars Look Very Different Today

by cyrene



Series: Long Live [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, I promise, allusions to Walburga Black's A+ parenting skills, but it's really lighthearted, mentions of prejudice in the wizarding world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27704237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyrene/pseuds/cyrene
Summary: In which Sirius Black, as a newly minted eleven-year-old, ventures into London to find out why Uncle Alphard has been missing.
Series: Long Live [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026196
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	And the Stars Look Very Different Today

**Author's Note:**

> God help and forgive me, what am I even doing starting a Marauders series?

There is magic in this world. Sirius Black had known this long before the age of eleven, but the wonder of childhood is that the whole world is laid out before you: a million things, all of them discovered so often before that adults treat them as mundane, all of them becoming magic in the new eyes of a child.

Muggle London, seen alone for the very first time, was one such magic.

Sirius had an address, carefully copied from an envelope he wasn’t supposed to know about, but which had not been hidden cleverly enough in his father’s study. What Sirius didn’t have was money. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Sirius had rather a lot of money, having just celebrated both his eleventh birthday and the arrival of his Hogwarts letter. The problem was that he couldn’t hail a Muggle cab in Muggle London with galleons and sickles.

What was Uncle Alphard doing here, anyway? Sirius wondered irritably. Why wasn’t he at his own flat, which had at least been hooked up to the Floo network, like any decent, civilized home ought to be?

Sirius was getting strange looks. He was accustomed to people looking; it was only natural, after all, that attention should gravitate to him. These looks, however, were neither appraising nor appreciative. They were apprehensive. In some cases, they were appalled. He was, after all, a strangely dressed boy walking the streets of Muggle London alone.

Looking at the map he had carefully copied (and he could get in trouble for that too, because he had used Uncle Alphard’s childhood wand from up in the attic to do it) Sirius didn’t think that he had too much further to go. The lines on the paper, however, did not feel like they were an accurate representation of the actual distance being traveled. It was entirely possible that the road he was on was some kind of never-ending loop, and that he would walk until he died of exhaustion or starvation, both very pressing realities at this point.

Sirius blew an errant strand of hair out of his face and trekked onward.

It should give the reader some comfort that Sirius did not die on his adventure, even though it had been a very likely possibility. He did, eventually, find the building he was looking for and was suitably unimpressed. While the kind of adult who found Muggle London mundane might have thought it a nice place to live, to the future heir of 12 Grimmauld Place and the Black family fortune it looked rather shabby. Certainly not as nice as his uncle’s previous residence had been.

Sirius reached up and knocked three times on the door, then three more just because he was irritated.

“Just come in, dum-dum; it’s a party!” an unfamiliar voice called from the other side.

Sirius frowned, checked the address he had written down, then knocked with a bit more force. After a moment the door opened, and he was faced with an unfamiliar woman. The stranger took one look at him – apprehensive, not approving – and called out behind her, “Al, I think you had better come see!”

Finally, his uncle came to the door, though he did not look happy in the least to see Sirius. Sirius scowled.

“Oh, shit.” Then, in a much friendlier tone, one obviously meant for small children: “Sirius, my boy, what are you doing here?” Sirius scowled harder and crossed his arms, to which Uncle Alphard replied, “Well, come in, then.”

“Why are _you_ here?” Sirius demanded. “Why aren’t you at your real flat? And why didn’t you come see me for my birthday? I got my letter, and I tried to Floo you, but no one answered.”

Uncle Alphard sighed. “Ah. Yes, that.” He looked at the stranger and said, “Mary, would you…?”

She nodded, already leaving the room. “I’ll just Muddle somewhere else for a bit, yeah?”

“It’s ‘Muggle’, dear, and it’s not a verb.” Uncle Alphard replied, biting back laughter. Then he turned his attention to Sirius. “So, how did you get here?”

Sirius explained about getting the address and the map, and the eternal walk, forgetting to keep his frown up somewhere along the way. Uncle Alphard, as he had predicted, was charmed and amused by the dramatic tale of Sirius’s adventure in Muggle London. Uncle Alphard had always been a good audience.

“All right,” he said next, “so that’s the how, but _why_ did you come here?”

Sirius remembered to scowl again. “Because you didn’t come for my birthday. You were supposed to come. You said after I got my letter we were going to go do something special to celebrate. Something just for you and me, and not even Regs could come. You _said_ , remember?”

Uncle Alphard sighed. He held his face in his hands for a moment, rubbed his stubble vigorously, then sat up again. “Yes, you’re right, Sirius. I did say that. It’s just that circumstances have changed a bit, and it’s not necessarily the best idea anymore, do you understand?”

“No,” Sirius pouted. He had been imagining this outing for two years, with increasing frequency as the day grew closer. Short of an apocalypse, he couldn’t imagine what could have changed his uncle’s mind.

“Well… you know the big family tree on the wall?” Sirius nodded. “And you know how most of the spots are names and birthdays and whatnot, but a few of them are just black splotches?” Sirius nodded again, more slowly this time. “Well, that’s going to be me. I’m about to be a black splotch.”

“How come?”

Uncle Alphard shifted uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “Well, they’re going to kick me out of the family.”

“Why?” Sirius asked suspiciously. “What did you do?” He couldn’t imagine this scenario either, except in the context of another apocalypse. Perhaps the world really _was_ going to end. Sirius tried to figure out what sort of scenario would be bad enough to actually cause the end of the world. Muggles, probably, and their guns and bombs.

Uncle Alphard snapped his fingers. “Sirius, focus please. Remember that nice lady who answered the door? She’s a Muggle.”

“You mean she’s Muggle-born? But Mother says…” Sirius let that sentence trail off, because his mother said a lot of things, really, and he wasn’t sure he ought to repeat them where the Muggle-born lady could hear them.

“No, Sirius, I mean she’s a Muggle. She’s not magic at all, and neither is her family. But I love her very much, and we’re going to get married. I think you already know how the family might feel about that.”

Sirius took a minute to process this. To be fair, it was a lot to take in all at once. “Is she nice?” he asked finally. “She’s never tried to kill you with a gun or anything?”

Uncle Alphard bit back a smile; his eyes, the same shape and color as Sirius’s, sparkled with mirth. “I rather like her. And I don’t know that she’s ever even seen a gun, let alone tried to kill someone.”

“We-ell,” Sirius said slowly, “that’s all right then, I guess. Did you tell Mother and Father that part? About her not having a gun, I mean. Maybe it will be all right.” Sirius highly doubted this, but it was worth a shot if it meant keeping his favorite relative from getting blasted off the family tree.

“Oh, Sirius. I don’t think they’ll care too much about that. But I’m very glad you do.”

The truth was that Sirius didn’t really care one way or the other about the Muggle lady, as long as she wasn’t going to shoot Uncle Alphard. He was really still upset about their plans being ruined. Sirius realized his mind was wandering again, and he tried to pick the thread of the conversation back up.

“I’m going to fetch Andi to take you home. She’ll say you were with her all day, and you need to stick to that story, or your mother will be very upset with us both. Will you be all right if Mary stays here while I’m gone, or shall I ask her to leave?”

Sirius thought about this, and supposed it was all right. After all, Uncle Alphard thought she was nice, and he was the coolest person Sirius knew.

Sirius sat on the couch in silence for a few minutes before he noticed the Muggle woman – Mary? – peeking out from the hallway.

“Hello, Sirius,” she said. “I’ve heard an awful lot about you.” She didn’t say it in the way adults do when they’re trying to make you like them. She said it like he was actually someone important.

“I haven’t heard anything about you before today,” Sirius, who had never been very good with decorum, replied.

“That’s all right. Listen, it’s awfully quiet in here. Would you like to put a record on? There’s one here your uncle wanted to get you for your birthday. I could put it on, if you like.”

Sirius perked up. “He got me a record?”

Mary winced. “Not exactly. You can’t take it home because it’s… it’s Muggle? – Is that right?” Sirius nodded. “But he said you have an appreciation for the dramatic, and you’d really like it.”

Sirius assumed that having an appreciation for the dramatic was a good thing, because it was something being said about him, and nodded again.

As she said this she began setting up the gramophone in the corner. After she had removed the record, she held the sleeve out to Sirius, who didn’t hesitate to take it from her even though she was definitely, all the way a Muggle. The cover looked bizarre, all blue circles and a strange man’s face. (Not an ugly man, just… strange.)

Then a voice began to sing.

This is a very important moment to note, because this was the moment that Sirius Black fell in love for the first time, somewhere around the words “and the stars look very different today”.

When Uncle Alphard returned with Andromeda, Sirius refused to leave until the record was finished. The adults and Andi were off in the kitchen, talking and looking very somber, but Sirius hardly noticed. He was too absorbed in the record – David Bowie, Mary had said, and it was a name he would remember the rest of his life – wondering how bad Muggles could really be if they made their magic like _this_.

As promised, when he got home he stuck to the story of hanging out with Andi all day, and while to two of them did get a bit of a talking-to, in the end the experience far outweighed the little bit of trouble. Unfortunately, to a child like Sirius, this meant it would be completely worth it to try again at the soonest opportunity.


End file.
